I got some data from an API with requests:
r = requests.get(...)
a = r.text
print(type(a))
str2JSON = json.dumps(a,indent=4)
print(type(str2JSON))
The result is:
class 'str'
class 'str'
Then I try loads instead of dumps:
str2JSON_2 = json.loads(a)
print(type(str2JSON_2))
And I get class list!!!
Why is that behaviour?
If you dump a string into JSON and you don’t get an error, does it automatically mean that the JSON is well parsed? Shouldn't that be a JSON class?
The thing you get back from requests is a str value containing a JSON encoded value.
dumps takes that str and produces another string containing the JSON-encoded version of the original (JSON-encoded) string.
You need loads to decode the string into a value.
json2str = json.loads(a,indent=4) # name change to reflect the direction of the operation
Consider:
>>> s = '"foo"' # A JSON string value
>>> json.dumps(s)
'"\\"foo\\""'
>>> json.loads(s)
'foo'
The string may, of course, encode a value other than a simple string:
>>> json.loads('3') # Compare to json.loads('"3"') returning '3'
3
>>> json.loads('[1,2,3]')
[1,2,3]
>>> json.loads('{"foo": 6}')
{'foo': 6}
requests, though, doesn't actually require you to remember which direction dumps and loads go (although you should make it a point to learn). A Response object has a json method which decodes the text attribute for you.
json2str = r.json() # equivalent to json2str = json.loads(r.text)
you are using requests. it provides convince method to parse your response as json (i.e. it loads it for you) you want a = r.json(). This way a would be JSON object and you can dump it as string later on. That is assuming you get valid json as response.
here is an example
import requests
import json
url = 'https://reqres.in/api/users' # dummy resposnse
resp = requests.get(url)
my_json = resp.json()
#print example user
print(my_json['data'][0])
json_string = json.dumps(my_json, indent=4)
print(json_string)
json.dumps returns a JSON formatted python string object.
Below the is the statement you can notice in actual implementation file for def dumps
"""Serialize
objto a JSON formattedstr.
loadsinstead ofdumps?